The Evangelisation of the UK: LICC/Imagine Research (1 of 3)

Over the past seven years LICC has conducted a number of pieces of research exploring the question of the evangelisation of the UK. We have looked at this question from a number of angles:

1. What are the barriers and bridges to belief today for non-Christians? What has proved to be key for people coming to faith?
2. What do Christians think about the question of mission? Are we fit for purpose?
3. What is the role of leaders in equipping people for mission?

Over this next series of posts we will attempt to synthesise some of the most important findings from our research. More depth can be found by clicking on the links and exploring the research findings in full.

What non-believers think & the power of the life lived
Beyond Belief (interviews with 40 agnostics exploring attitudes to religion, Christianity and belief conducted 2003) and Beyond the Fringe (research into the varied beliefs and understandings of people who have no formalised faith conducted 2005) demonstrate there is widespread and near automatic distrust of formalised religion.

Often there is a disconnection between the big questions people have and (the perception of) Christianity’s traditional responses. Although the respondent’s understanding of the real content of the Christian narrative was usually partial and often filled with assumption and hearsay, it is contact with the ‘strange’ witness of believers who are actively living the gospel that is the most challenging and disorientating to those who are critical of religion and Christianity. Indeed, in a context where institutional religion is dismissed out of hand, the tangible witness of the individual to a new way of living becomes all the more important.

These findings were significant for LICC as they convinced us that the missional issue of the evangeliastion of the UK is essentially a discipleship issue. The UK will not be won for Christ by discovering a silver bullet or by seeing people come into an institution that they distrust but by equipping God's people to live well wherever they are.

Here in more detail were our findings...

Barriers to Belief:

a) Cultural Barriers
i. A mechanically critical attitude towards religion. The church as an ‘institution’ is automatically untrustworthy. Professing hatred for religion verges on being a social necessity.
ii. Church perceived to be inflexible and insufficiently consumer friendly
iii. Underlying assumption that belief is synonymous with credulousness and that religious faith demands complete, unquestioning obedience
b) Personal Barriers
i. Perception that only religious people can be hypocrites
ii. Guerrilla morality – aggressive defence of moral credentials but these are always their own, remaining internalised and never formally proclaimed
iii. Tolerance was the unquestioned supreme deity in the respondent’s universe of values; intolerance the greatest sin (Tolerance however is in the eye of the beholder)
c) Ecclesiastical Barriers
i. Perception of church as cold and antiquated
ii. Believers initially perceived as patronising, narrow-minded, colourless, judgemental misfits, although this did not square with personal experience
iii. Knowledge of Bible and Christian teaching low – the most ignorant respondents tended to be the most vociferous critics
d) Intellectual Barriers
i. The perceived unreliability of the Bible
ii. The problem of pain
iii. The warfare between science and religion

Bridges to Belief:

a) Social Bridges
i. Recognition of social malaise and a near unanimous sense of disaffection (lack of respect for authority, family breakdown, omni-consumerism, instant gratification and value-less TV)
b) Personal Bridges
i. Most respondents indicated a spiritual interest
ii. Whilst religion was vigorously criticised, spirituality was widely praised
iii. However, spirituality is popular as it is about my self-fulfilment and demands little of me that I don’t wish to give. It is as much a barrier as a bridge to Christian faith.
c) Ecclesiastical Bridges
i. Clear differentiation between ‘normal’ (i.e. nominal) Christians and genuine
(sometimes called born-again) believers
ii. The latter are perceived to be strange but sincere and usually decent
d) Intellectual Bridges
i. Whilst it would be nice to believe in God, it is not perceived as intellectually defensible
ii. Most people have lost the traditional Christian spiritual language and as a result have no natural vocabulary for the sense and experience of the numinous they still have.